Simplyles.co.uk

Sheffield Born & Bred 

        Forgework                            ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

I left school with no qualifications and all I wanted to do was earn decent money from the word go. Some of my brighter friends went into apprenticeships to become plumbers, electricians etc and had very little spending money, but bloody hell, look at them now, they are probably earning three times as much as me. I started work at Joseph Rodgers the famous cutlery company which was sited at Pond Hill (now long gone) across from the oldest pub in Sheffield the Queens Head. I enjoyed my time there and got my fair share of ribbing from the "Buffer Women", you didn't mess around with them or you would end up with a belt round the earhole, but they were great characters.  I left there after a year because some of my friends were working at Hillfoot Steel Forge on Bradfield Road  in Hillsborough and the money was good. In those days you could get work in forges easily and if you was good at your job you could knock a day a week (pretend to be off sick) and the company would warn you but you didn't get the sack, or at least not at our forge. I spent the next 30yrs in the steel industry, only breaking it by doing two years at Bass Charringtons Brewery on Claywheels Lane, I put on about a stone while there cos while they were brewing it we were all supping it !!.The latter 25yrs was with the same company (although it was bought out and the name changed several times) until the yanks took us over and shut us down. It was very  hard work but the men you worked with were the best, they were rough diamonds but with hearts of gold and funny as they come. I do miss the atmosphere these days but not the hard graft.

In my time I have done most of the jobs that are associated with forging but have only worked on hammers & dropstamps up to a maximum of 2 tons. In my opinion the smaller the weight the faster you have to work !!

I ended my forging career doing dropstamping, basically a dropstamp comprises of 2 dies      (bottom & top), the top die is raised and then dropped on top of hot metal that is positioned over the bottom die, the skill is in keeping the dies set.

Adjusting the bottom die entailed wielding a 28lb sledge hammer to turn the screws that kept the dies in place. (most people will never have seen this size hammer let alone try to swing one, bloody heavy going I can tell you !!!)

I spent most of my forge life working in "Open Face" forging which I believe takes more skill, for this you need good eye & hand  co-ordination, in this type of work you either worked solo or with others, I have done both.

 
The video below was taken at the "RECORD TOOLS" forge on Meadow Street around 6 months before the site was closed down the first person you see dropstamping is me.